There are days when everything is a bit too familiar. The same route, the same coffee, the same playlist you haven't changed in months. And the same scent your hand reaches for almost automatically. Not because you stopped liking it. Simply, sometimes there is a desire to open the door and see what lies behind it.
In the world of perfumes, such a small departure from routine can be fruits whose aroma cannot be easily compared to apple, lemon, or peach. Passion fruit is sweet, sour, and a bit unpredictable. Lychee hides a bright, juicy interior under its rough skin. Two exotic fruits, two completely different impressions, and two Söppö scents that allow you to take a very close look at them.
Mad Gut and Jelly Belly don't try to turn passion fruit and lychee into grand tropical cocktails. They are monoperfumes — they allow one fruit to stay in the spotlight. And perhaps that's why they fit well in moments when you feel like sensing something a little less obvious. Not to change your whole life. Just to try a different scent.
Fresh perfumes don't have to start with citrus
When you think "fresh perfume", what comes first? Lemon? Bergamot? Maybe grapefruit and that characteristic impression as if someone just cut its peel right next to you?
These are the most intuitive associations, but freshness has many more faces. It can smell like green leaves, stems, and grass. It can resemble cool air, water, or a sea breeze. It can also appear in fruits — juicy, light, sometimes sweet, sometimes sour, and sometimes doing both at once. In the classification of fragrance families, citrus, aquatic and marine, green, and fruity notes function as separate directions, though each can build an impression of lightness and freshness in its own way.
And this is where it gets interesting. Because if for years a fresh scent mostly meant citrus or marine notes for you, an exotic fruit can stir up this definition a bit. It can still be crisp and light, but instead of the sharp flash of lemon, a pulp full of juice appears. Instead of green tea or cool mint — fruity sweetness broken by acidity.
There is no single correct version of freshness. Just as there isn't one scent for summer or one composition that will be suitable for everyone. Sometimes the most refreshing thing turns out to be exactly what we hadn't considered before.
Mad Gut – sweet, sour, and truly tropical passion fruit
Passion fruit doesn't look like a fruit that particularly cares about a good first impression. A bit wrinkled on the outside, full of seeds embedded in golden pulp on the inside. If you see it for the first time, you might wonder for a moment what you're actually supposed to do with it.
And then you take a spoon.
First comes the sweetness. A moment later, a delicate acidity joins in, and suddenly everything becomes juicier, more distinct, a bit exotic. It is this contrast that is the core of Mad Gut. Passion fruit scented perfumes were built around one note — passion fruit: ripe, tropical, sweet, and slightly sour. There is no mango, pineapple, or a whole basket of exotic fruits trying to take over the attention. From start to finish, there is only one protagonist.
This is also important from the perspective of the Söppö monoperfume idea. Their goal is not to create a simplified version of classic perfumes, but to show a specific note or accord as clearly as possible. In Mad Gut, passion fruit is therefore not just an element of the composition. It is the whole story.
And this story begins exactly where predictability ends. Mad Gut smells like a ripe fruit eaten with a spoon straight from the skin — juicy, tropical, and with a sour counterpoint that doesn't allow the sweetness to become too heavy. The brand used 30% fragrance concentration here to preserve the character of passion fruit as faithfully as possible without adding heavier notes that would change its naturalistic direction.
Perhaps that's why passion fruit fits so well into the story of breaking routine. It doesn't smell like another thing you already know. Rather, it's a reminder that even on an ordinary day, you can still encounter something that wasn't on your map before.
Jelly Belly – the luminous and juicy side of lychee
Lychee likes to put on a little show. First, it shows a rough, dark pink skin that looks a bit as if the fruit would rather keep its distance. Only when you take it off does a completely different interior appear — bright, soft, full of juice. A small fortress that, once opened, turns out to be much more delicate than suggested from the outside.
It is on this contrast that Jelly Bellyis based. These are lychee scented perfumes focused on a ripe, sweet, and juicy scent, but at the same time fresh, luminous, and almost watery. There is no vanilla, jasmine, or other flowers that would elaborate on the story for the fruit. Lychee is left alone and gets the entire space for itself.
Thanks to this, Jelly Belly doesn't lean towards a heavy, dessert-like sweetness. It's more like the first bite of a freshly peeled fruit — soft, full of juice, but leaving an impression of lightness. This is a completely different kind of exoticism than the one we just encountered in Mad Gut. There, the contrast of sweetness and acidity drew attention. Here, everything happens more quietly: through delicacy, juiciness, and light.
In the story of Söppö, lychee gains another meaning. The rough shell and delicate interior become an image of boundaries that don't have to mean coldness. You can have your fortress and still leave room in it for those you truly want to let in. Jelly Belly doesn't tell a story of weakness hidden under a hard layer. Rather, it's about a sensitivity that has learned to decide whom it wants to show itself to.
Passion fruit or lychee – which direction is closer to you?
You don't have to choose the "best" perfume. Actually, it would be good to forget for a moment that such a thing exists. Scent is not a competition where one fruit wins gold and the other goes home sad.
Better to ask: what do you feel like today?
If you prefer scents where sweetness meets a delicate acidity and the exotic fruit has a bit more bite, Mad Gut leads towards passion fruit. If you prefer a softer fruitiness, more delicacy, and juicy sweetness, Jelly Belly shows another face of the tropics. These are two mono-scents and two different experiences — without the need to determine which of them is more "proper". The brand builds the character of Mad Gut around ripe, sweet-sour passion fruit, while Jelly Belly stays with sweet, luminous, and juicy lychee.
You can also do something even simpler: stop choosing perfumes according to what you "should" like. Sometimes one fruit turns out to be love at first spray. Sometimes it needs a few encounters. And sometimes the greatest pleasure comes from the change itself — passion fruit one day, lychee the next.
Because exploring your own scent taste doesn't have to start with knowing all the perfume families, musk, cedar, ylang ylang, or oakmoss. It can start much simpler: this smells good to me. This doesn't. I want this one again.
And that is already quite a lot.
Why do fruity scents work so well in summer?
Summer has a strange ability to change the appetite for scents. Suddenly a heavy sweater smells like a bad idea, coffee can be iced, and fruits taste best when the juice starts running down your fingers. In the fragrance wardrobe, we also often make more room for things that are light, juicy, and crisp.
This doesn't mean, however, that there are official summer perfumes, and with the first cooler evening, they should be politely tucked away in a drawer. Söppö doesn't really like such rules. If passion fruit smells good to you in November — November just got passion fruit.
In summer, however, it's particularly easy to find yourself in fruity associations. Ripe pulp, sour juice, exotic fruits eaten somewhere while traveling, something cold pulled from the fridge, wet hands after cutting fruit. Such a scent doesn't have to refer to classic marine or citrus notes to give the impression of being fresh. It can remain sweet while having space and lightness within it.
That's why Mad Gut and Jelly Belly can be treated as two non-obvious directions for warmer days. Not because summer requires passion fruit or lychee. Simply, both show the fruit without heavy decoration: Mad Gut leaves passion fruit alone at the center of the composition, and Jelly Belly does the same with lychee.
And when summer ends? Nothing happens. The bottle doesn't know the calendar.
A story from the founder of Söppö – I don't want to tell stories only about myself through perfumes
When I think about creating perfumes, I am less and less interested in the question: "how do I want to tell a story about myself?". Much more interesting to me is what happens next — when the bottle reaches someone else and begins to mean something I could never have imagined myself.
Because the same scent can open completely different doors.
For one person, it will be a memory of a holiday. For another, something that reminds them of the kitchen in their family home, a first trip, or a fruit tasted once by chance and remembered for years. Someone else won't find any old memory in it — and will write a new one with it.
That's probably one of the things I like most about perfumes. You can create a composition very consciously, refine its character, decide which way it should lead, and yet not have the last word. The ultimate story only begins on someone's skin.
That's why Söppö is an artisanal brand, but I don't want it to be a brand focused on the author. We don't create perfumes so that someone gets to know us through them first and foremost. It's more important to me that they can find a piece of themselves in them — their own association, their own whim, their own "oh, that's exactly how I wanted to smell, I just couldn't name it before".
Maybe that's why single notes are so close to me. They give space. They don't suggest the whole story from the first to the last sentence. They leave room for yours to be added to them.
And then perfumes stop being just what someone enclosed in a bottle. They start being what happened next.
FAQ
Are Mad Gut and Jelly Belly perfumes for women?
The term perfumes for women can help in navigating the offer, but at Söppö we treat such divisions more as a guide than a rule. Scent doesn't have to have a gender – the same perfumes can be chosen by women and men, if a given note simply suits them. In the case of monoperfumes, the most important thing remains whether you like a specific aroma.
Can crisp perfumes be long-lasting?
Crispness describes the way the scent is perceived, not its concentration. The longevity is influenced by both the concentration of the composition and the character of the molecules used. Therefore, even crisp perfumes can be relatively long-lasting, though lighter notes will behave differently than heavier base ingredients. This also doesn't mean an automatic guarantee that every scent will be felt just as intensely throughout the whole day.
What notes can create an impression of freshness in perfumes?
Freshness can have many facets. It is built, among others, by green notes, associated with grass or fresh leaves, but also citrus, aquatic accords, neroli, sage, or certain flowers. In a more floral direction, peony, lotus, or a freesiaaccord can appear, for example. Each of these ingredients, however, gives a different kind of freshness – from green and cool to soft and floral.
Are fruity perfumes always "joyful"?
There is no single emotion assigned to a specific fragrance family. For one person, fruity perfumes may be perceived as a joyful scent and evoke associations with holidays or a good mood, for another they will be primarily juicy, nostalgic, or simply intriguing. Scent triggers one's own memories and associations, which is why its emotional reception remains very personal.
How to choose new perfumes when I don't know the fragrance notes well?
When choosing new perfumes , you don't have to recognize all the families, heart notes, and base ingredients right away. Monoperfumes allow you to start with a simpler question: what aroma do I really like? Over time, it's easier to notice whether you're closer to fruits, flowers, green notes, woody notes, or more non-obvious compositions. It's about getting to know your own nose without a perfumery exam at the end.
